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Ask Slashdot: How Do You Automatically Sanitize PDF Email Attachments?
First time accepted submitter supachupa writes "It seems the past couple of years that spearfishing is getting very convincing and it is becoming more and more likely someone (including myself) will accidentally click on a PDF attachment with malicious javascript embedded. It would be impossible to block PDFs as they are required for business. We do disable javascript on Adobe reader, but I would sleep a lot better knowing the code is removed completely. I have looked high and low but could not find a cheap out of the box solution or a 'how to' guide for automatically neutralizing PDFs by stripping out the javascript. The closest thing I could find is using PDF2PS and then reversing the process with PS2PDF. Does anyone know of a solution for this that is not too complex, works preferably at the SMTP relay, and can work with ZIPed PDFs as well, or have some common sense advice for dealing with this so that once its in place, there is no further action required by myself or by users."
Check out Sumatrapdf http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html. It's super fast and does not support javascript or actionscript in PDF's. I use it exclusively now.
That isn't really 'sanitizing', though: It's certainly good that you practice safe text on your computer; but if you are the mailserver guy, and may or may not have as much control as you'd like over the users and their filthy, weatherbug-encrusted, systems, you want to modify the file such that it no longer contains a potential payload, not merely use a reader that doesn't execute payloads.